California may be a blue, blue state but there are millions of Trump voters here too. It’s a big population. And the right-wingers here are as right wing as it gets. Remember, both Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes are from California.
The California wingnuts aren’t happy:
President Trump’s support among Republicans and other conservative voters has begun to erode amid the continued coronavirus pandemic and its associated economic havoc, a new poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies shows.
The poll shows Trump far behind Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in California. That’s no surprise — even at his strongest Trump was unlikely ever to be competitive in California, a heavily Democratic state.
What is notable, however, is the size of the gap and the degree to which approval of Trump’s work as president has declined among groups that until now have supported him.
Biden leads Trump in California by 39 percentage points, 67% to 28%, the poll found. That’s 9 points larger than the margin by which Hillary Clinton beat Trump statewide in 2016 — a record at the time. And the share of Californians who approve of Trump’s performance in office, which has held steady in the mid-to-low 30% range for nearly his entire tenure, has now ticked downward to just 29%.
That’s consistent with other polls nationally and in battleground states that show a nationwide tide lifting Biden, swelling his margin in states like California, moving him solidly ahead in close-fought states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and making him potentially competitive in states that Trump won more handily last time, such as Texas and Georgia.
“There was a question of whether his support was already so low in the state that it couldn’t go lower,” said Berkeley political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies. The poll “shows the answer is no.”
Aides to both candidates believe the biggest factor in Trump’s decline is voters’ fear of the coronavirus and belief that the administration has botched its handling of the pandemic. The poll provides further evidence of that.
About two-thirds of the state’s voters see the health threat from the coronavirus getting worse. They back Biden 84% to 11%. By contrast, about 1 in 8 say the health threat is getting less serious; they back Trump 87% to 10%. About 1 in 5 voters say the threat from the virus is about the same as it’s been; they’re closely divided.
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Opinions of Trump … have gotten worse since the winter. A Berkeley IGS poll in January showed 33% of the state’s voters approved of the way he is handling his job as president. In the most recent poll, that’s dropped to 29%, with 71% disapproving, including 63% who say they “strongly” disapprove.
Since the vast majority of Democrats already disapproved of Trump, the drop in approval comes mostly among Republicans and nonpartisan voters. Among voters who identified themselves as moderate conservatives, for example, approval dropped 11 points, from 76% in January to 65% now.
Erosion of Trump’s support among moderate conservatives is another trend seen nationwide in recent surveys.
In California, the decline shows up in the more conservative regions of the state. In the Inland Empire, approval of Trump dropped 8 points, from 43% in January to 35% in the current poll. In the Central Valley, it dropped 7 points, from 44% in January to 37% now.
“There’s evidence nationally of a decline for Trump in more rural areas where the coronavirus has spread,” Schickler said. The poll seems to be “showing a similar thing here.”
The equal opportunity haters seem to be holding their noses for Biden:
About 15% of voters have an unfavorable view of both candidates. That group supports Biden by 5 to 1. That’s a big shift from 2016, when voters nationwide who disliked both candidates broke heavily in Trump’s favor.
Biden has a huge lead in the state not only because Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in California, but also because the former vice president has a big lead among non-partisan voters and has made inroads among traditionally Republican groups while Trump has almost no traction among traditionally Democratic groups.
For example, Biden gets about one-quarter of California voters who call themselves “somewhat conservative” — about 1 in 6 California voters. By contrast, Trump gets almost no support among voters who call themselves “somewhat liberal,” who make up about 1 in 5 of the state’s voters.
The state’s nonpartisan voters back Biden by about 4 to 1, the poll found.
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In liberal California, even white men without college educations — Trump’s strong point nationwide — back Biden. The former vice president leads among that group 54% to 42%, the poll found. That pales compared to Biden’s support among college-educated women, however. They back him 79% to 17%.
One group is sticking by him though:
Evangelical Christians, who are among Trump’s most steadfast backers nationwide, form one of the few major demographic groups in the state that gives majority support to the president. California voters who say they are evangelicals back Trump 56% to 39%, the poll found.
Trump, who has pitched multiple campaign appeals to racial prejudice, also gets strong support from the roughly 30% of the state’s voters who disapprove of the Black Lives Matter movement. Those who disapprove of the movement back Trump over Biden 83% to 11%, the poll found. The much larger group that approves of the movement backs Biden 93% to 3%.
You can’t judge anything about the rest of the country by California, but it’s not a stretch to judge the Republican Party by California Republicans. There are plenty of suburban GOP moderates and they’re lost to Trump. That’s hardly surprising. But as I said, while California is a super blue state, the right wingers here are as right wing as the wingnuttiest Mississippian. If he’s losing some of them, as he surely is if he’s now losing white non-college educated white men by ten points, it’s really something.